relationships

After a month, I finally feel I have some perspective on our wedding today. First, being married is fabulous! Second, the day was so much more than I thought it would be. It was wonderful to be surrounded by so many loved ones as we made our commitment. We had 120 people with us for our wedding, and it was the perfect amount. We were able to get around, see people, and not be pulled in too many directions.

I don't have all the pictures, but there is a small collection up on our photographer's website. And while I am mentioning them, I'd like to give them the heartiest thanks ever. We were able to fly out two of my friends from high school, and I am beyond glad we made that decision. I love the photos we've seen so far, and I can't wait to share more. I will tell more stories and post photos as time goes on.

Matt and I are engaged! I've been remiss in my sharing duties, as we've been engaged for quite awhile now. Heck, we've had the photos for quite awhile. We had our photos done in July by the eminently talented Kelly of K&K graphics (she's a good friend too!). We enjoyed walking around Portland and spending some quality time together.

Our wedding will be in December. We're hoping for snow a few days ahead of time so folks can still travel and everything will be pretty. We have all the big details set except for the photographer; that's the most nerve-wracking part for me as I love good photography!

Above all, looking at these photos again reminds me how excited I am to spend even more time with Matt in the many years to come.

A note: I will never, ever, ever own a mouse with a "back" button on it (I'm on lunch at work). This marks the third time I have accidentally hit the back button and had to rewrite all or part of this post. Thankfully, I remembered to save one draft!

All is well in Leah-land, but it is busy and stressful. Work continues to be fulfilling, what with spending lots of time in nature with young kids. But it's also stressful, since I take over other people's jobs when they leave on vacation (and two people are out this week). I'm also just trying to find time to enjoy the beautiful summer weather.

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Did you know that drowning doesn't look like "drowning"? This excellent article describes how to spot someone who is drowning, and I was surprised to find out that it's not at all like we expect. One of the best tips I picked up from the article is that drowning people are typically quiet. As they say, kids in the water make noise; if they're not making noise anymore, something is up. Definitely give it a read. I'd never heard any of this before, and I have worked with kids in and around water.

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Vampire energy is the term for electricity that is used by plugged in equipment even when that equipment isn't on. This takes up a surprising amount of energy each year. When I signed up for renewable energy for a 101 things goal (near the end of the post), I also worked diligently at reducing power consumption. We did so by using power strips for all our electronics and turning off the strips when our microwave, TV, etc weren't in use. We managed to get out bill down to $15-20 per month for a two bedroom apartment, which was pretty awesome in my view. I must admit that it was a pain to constantly reach behind things to turn off power strips, but it did pay off.

Imagine my happiness in discovering that there are now remote-control operated power strips! There's an excellent review over at LA Green Girl about the Pratecol power strip. There's remote control power strips and power strips with foot pedal turn-offs. I am so buying a few of these when we redo our living room soon. Matt and I don't currently pay electric where we live, but we still like to conserve.

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A new-twist on an old subject: 7 tips for dealing with a sweetheart who is crabby all the time. These tips focus on how you can adjust behavior, since you're the only one you can change. I really love the focus here, because it acknowledges that there are two sides to every situation. I must admit that I am sometimes (maybe often?) crabby at the end of a long workday, mostly because of the frustrating hour-long commute I do. Matt has been a gem, and I think he already does several of these tips. Recently, he's been cooking dinner for me, and it makes a ton of difference in how I feel. In return, I've started washing more dishes, and I even empty the dish drainer before leaving for work in the morning so that he has a clean kitchen to cook in.

What’s something you know now about happiness that you didn’t know when you were younger?

What I know now is that life is long -- you don't have to do everything at the same time. When I turned 30 I entered a ridiculously productive period -- I published five books in five years and had two children. Then I gave birth to my third son, and it all went to hell in a hand-basket (or, more accurately, a diaper pail). It was a number of years -- eight, to be exact -- before I published another novel. But during that period I learned a lot about life and love and other important things, and my writing -- and my life in general -- are better for it.

Sometimes, I feel guilty because I just am not a social drinker. And I mean that in the broadest sense of the terms. I don't drink coffee, I am exceedingly picky about beer, and soda is a rare treat for me. Mostly, I just drink water. However, our society seems highly structured around going out somewhere, or going to someone's house, to sit around and chat while drinking something. It seems so adult to me.

I wonder what this need comes from? Why can't we just sit around and talk? Perhaps it's the comfort we get from having something to do with our hands. You can twirl a straw, peel the beer bottle label, slide the glass around; anything, really. Drinks are also a really easy way to avert eye contact, since it's reasonable that you may need to tilt your head or occasionally look down at your drink.

I also see how it is nice to get out somewhere. Especially in Minnesota, where it's difficult to sit around outdoors for several months of the year, it is nice to have a place to go to. That way, no one has to clean their living room or stock a full fridge worth of beverages, and everyone gets their choice of drinks.

However, this whole meeting for drinks thing just doesn't appeal to me. Like I said above, I don't do coffee. I can order tea when we go out, but every coffee place makes the tea way too hot which means that I spend a half hour just stirring to get the tea cold enough to drink. Going to bars means often means lots of money spent on drinks and sometimes too much background noise to even talk decently. Call me crazy, but I just don't care. No, wait: I do care. Otherwise, I wouldn't feel guilty. But I just don't usually want to go out.

However, I think back to my teenage years when I did lots of social "drinking" (non-alcoholic, of course). We were all poor. We had no choice but to gather around a kitchen table or hang out in the living room; something like the coffee shop was a rare treat (and, even then, not my thing -- I'd rather spend my treat money at the bookstore). I remember several nights spent drinking pitcher after pitcher with one good friend as we carried philosophical conversations into the night. I didn't find the drink and chat so difficult back then.

What's changed as I've aged? Is it merely the venue that is difficult for me? Or am I encountering the growing pains of trying to establish adult friendships when we no longer go to the same school and have plenty of fodder for conversation? Or is it perhaps time I cultivate a little less pickiness about my beer and a more relaxed attitude?

In any case, this is a challenge I'll continue to work on. I certainly do love hanging out, and I'm working hard to cultivate friendships in Minnesota. Being an adult can be hard some days.

I just got off the phone with my dear friend Viola, an expat who now lives in Spain. She's visiting a friend in the states and called me up just to chat. Our conversation was brief -- 20 minutes -- but important.

Some days, in all my moving around the country and craziness and new experiences, I lose touch with something that is truly important: community. Perhaps it is my lack of a consistent community that drives me to say this, but I do think community is one of the strongest and most important things in our lives. And not to knock my online friends, because they're great, but a community of people who lives close is the best.

I don't have a close community yet in Minnesota, but I do have a community of people who have known me over time. These people have seen me on good days and bad; they've helped me write papers, learn how to cook, play games, and love life. And reconnecting with these people really helps me know my sense of self.

Viola and I are friends from college. We lived on the same floor (different wings, tho) in the dorms, and I'm pretty sure we met because we were in the same honors writing class. We didn't have many classes together, but we did take poetry as well. Despite not interacting in class, we always took time to spend time with each other. Viola did teach me a good many things about cooking (first and foremost: improvise!). She's always been my dedicated poetry buddy and life contemplating friend. We can go months without talking, but each time we do reconnect, it's just normal.

I need to remember these old friendships, and also let these friendships encourage me to get out in the world and make some new friends too.

Just finished a nice cry thanks to the following video. It's a speech from NY Senator Diane Savino in the state senate about the gay marriage bill. It's beautiful and brilliant, and it says more than we typically hear from politicians. I particularly like it because she differentiates a wedding from marriage, and she talks about the difference between the government contract and the religious institution. Plus, there's some funny jokes in there. I promise!

I read this on {cypress and oak}, and I just had to share. It's such a lovely thought about love. She recently got married and had a beautiful wedding. And this is what she wrote about love:

I really believe that there’s someone out there for everyone. Sometimes it just takes a little time to find said person. I’ve dated some real doozies, and stuck it out in those bad relationships because I thought that love wasn’t supposed to be easy. My last relationship was with a really nice guy who wasn’t right for me (and I wasn’t right for him). It literally never occurred to me that the effort we had to exert to keep the relationship going shouldn’t have been necessary.

That’s not to say that love is always easy. Fortunately I have two excellent models of happy marriages (Mama and Mr. Mama; Pop and Mrs. Pop). Add to that the Mister’s parents (Momma Mac and Mac Daddy). These relationships prove that love, like a well-rooted tree, is natural. It grows and bears fruit without trying. There may be hard winters that the tree must endure, but there are also optimistic springs and lush summers. So while love may not be easy, it is natural. My feelings for the Mister are the very first time that love ever felt right. Magical. Inevitable.

Side note: I am not getting married anytime in the forseeable future. But one of my guilty little pleasures is reading about people and their lovely weddings. I found this wedding via the "Wedding Graduates" series over at A Practical Wedding. I love seeing all the neat little ideas people had for the weddings, and it's even given me a few decorating ideas for a future home.

I've done a fair bit of online dating in my day. Heck, my dad even suggested it to me after I met (and sometimes dated) a fair number of "real life" duds. It's much less random than bumping into someone on the street, and it's easy to vett out the guys who obviously aren't compatible with you.

Online dating has worked well for me; I met my current boyfriend online. So it was with great interest that I read a story in this week's NYTimes about the science of online dating. In the article, the author discusses eharmony, match.com, plentyofffish, and several other for-pay dating sites. I like her conclusion -- that no one site is better than another -- but I think she had some major oversites in her article.

For starters, she only discusses sites that cost money. Yes, there is a big segment of the online dating world that is costly. But there are also sites that provide the same services for free. I suppose I'm biased, since I've never paid to use a dating site. However, I have watched other friends pay for their subscriptions, and I really don't think my experience was that different from theirs.

The two sites I've used predominantly are craigslist (CL in net speak) and OKCupid. CL is substantially different from other dating sites, as users just post a brief ad and sometimes a picture, but it is one way to meet people. I've dating a handful of fellas from CL with the net gain of one short relationship. OKCupid is much more like match.com and other sites; you post pictures, a profile, and some stats. You also answer a lot of questions about yourself. The nice thing about OKCupid is that you can always answer more questions, at your own pace, to help increase your chances of matching well. No one sees the answer to your questions, but the computer uses your answers (which include your answer, your desired answer in a mate, and how much you care about the question) to match you up with others.

OKCupid has done me well. That's where I met Matt, and I also had another boyfriend from the site. Better yet, I gained several friends from the site, and I think that's the true benefit of a for-free dating site that offers lots of options (you can look for just friends, a hookup, casual dating, or serious dating). I wouldn't say the process is substantially different, but the benefits of not having to pay can't be overestimated. Plus, knowing the service is free helps take the sting off of the multitude of crappy dates (ratio? probably 2-3 crappy dates to each decent guy that I met).

In the end, it seems to me that what matters most is adding to your repertoire of how to meet people. With online dating, I had another tool in my kit that helped me socially engage with the people in my area. And as a young adult who no longer has the social structure of school to help me meet people, I appreciate every method at my disposal for social interaction.

Just three weeks after the fact . . . I'll be posting PNW vacation pics and tidbits for the next few days. I've got all the good pictures up at my flickr site, and I'll just put a selection up here to share some of the beautiful things Matt and I saw. The vacation was wonderful and refreshing; it was delightful to finally see some of my favorite people after a very long time being away from friends.